Twitter duel of the decade

   
 As  if there was any doubt of Twitters influence in the modern world, it has extended its reach into policy deliberation.  Senator Charles Shumer (D-NY) tweeted “Tks w/ @SpeakerBoehner were going well- serious budget cuts discussed until Tea Party forced him 2 move goalposts [Tea Party] is only obstacle 2 deal.”  Shortly after Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) tweeted right back “If @SenatorReid @ChuckSchumer force gov to partially shut down b/c they oppose sensible spending cuts, Americans will hold them accountable.”
   
    Both Shumer and Cantor want to avoid a government shutdown but they have different visions in mind for the spending cuts and tax increases involved that would avert that crisis.   I truly hope that both sides reach an agreement because my pay would be suspended and more importantly it would solidify what we already believe about congress: They are stubborn, incompetent fools who can't reach a solution on anything.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/52173_Page2.html

Chaves to recieve journalism award?

    I was carousing the web for some blog worthy news when i came across this nugget: "Argentina's University of La Plata was giving [Hugo Chaves] its Rodolfo Walsh Prize on Tuesday 'for his unquestionable and authentic commitment' to giving people without a voice access to the airwaves and newspapers."  Surely you can't be serious (and dont call me Shirley).  Venezuela is a notoriously communist country that controls 99% of all the media outlets and forces anyone who disagrees with them off TV or Radio.  I pray for journalists everywhere that this was just an early April fools joke. 

Reporters in Combat Zone

   I have to give credit where credit is due to reporters in combat zones, focusing mainly on the conflict in Libya.  Journalists in Libya have gone above and beyond to get the best possible coverage of the ongoing conflict.  Reporters have had rockets land just a hundred feet away from them, been taken captive, and gotten in to heated, physical arguments with Quadaffi's minders.  I would just like to give praise to their journalistic integrity and willingness to be on the front lines to get a story, which is a beam of light in this modern day world of soft news.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/03/27/libya.woman.attack.cnn/index.html?hpt=Sbin

The Kill Team

    This is a follow up of sorts to an earlier blog post of mine in which I discussed the the power that the images of soldiers with bodies in Afghanistan can have.  Rolling Stone Magazine seems to have gone all out trying to slander the military and all soldiers, displaying them as evil corrupt killers. 
   
    Rolling Stone has an entire section devoted to the dimunitiion of the military.  Included at the link posted below, RS has many articles trying to prove military deviance and has also posted the pictures that they claim the Pentagon has "censored."  Obviously they were sensored.  They were about to be used as evidence in a high profile case, and are incredibly gruesome.  There was no cover up, just the military lookign out for its soldiers, knowing that there would be major backlash once they got released. 

    Also posted at the RS link are two videos that they claim show unjust killing in Afghanistan.  Over course everyone killed in the videos were combatants, but they try to empathize with the enemy of course. 

     Finally, RS has several articles, also posted at the link, tearing apart our war effort as well as the current and former leaders such as Generals Caldwell, Patreus, the Pentagon as a whole, and of course the article that RS braggingly claims changed history: the interview which wrongfully forced Gen. McChrystal to resign, changing the dynamic of the War in Afghanistan. 
Here is the link hopefully you will not be brainwashed by what they have to say:
  http://www.rollingstone.com/kill-team#FullStory

News Surge 2011

    The vice president of CNN International, Tony Maddox said “We’ve had a year’s worth of international breaking news, and we’re only halfway through March." From the uprisings all over the Middle East, to the tsunai that struck Japan its been a very large news year.  The New York Times says "television news coverage of foreign events this year is at the highest level since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks 10 years ago..."  The amzing part of it is, is the fact that media outlets have been able to keep up with the daily turn out of events and have been able to report on scene. Technology has improved so much in the past decade that it has helped get interviews with people that would have been unreachable only a few short years ago. 
    
     The two outlets that have benefited most from all this has been Al-Jazeera and CNN.  With all of the chaos in Middle East Al-Jazeera was able to capture the stories unlike anyone else, bringing them to the forefront on Middle East covereage.  Even Americans and Jews who consider Al-Jazeera to be vehemently anti-semetic and anti-American have turned to them for the best possible covereage.
   
     CNN has also benefited from the surge in headlines recently, which has propelled them ahead of Fox News in ratings in the past few days.  CNN, who usually finishes second to perenial cable news power-house has surpassed Fox in terms of viewership due to their extraordinary coverage in international news.

    Although a conservative, i have conceeded that CNN and Al-Jazeera have done an excellent job covering these recent events.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/business/media/23msnbc.html?ref=television
 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/business/media/21press.html?ref=television

The Pentagon Papers part II

Most people believe that Pvt. Daniel Manning, who is currently being held in prison for sending classified documents and videos to wikileaks, is guilty.  However there is a very vocal minority who believes he is innocent.  The most prominent figure of the group is a man who found himself in the same situation exactly 40 years ago. Daniel Ellsberg, leaked the infamous "Pentagon Papers" to the New York Times which showed that many top government officials knew that the Vietnam War was unwinable.  Daniel Ellsberg said "I was Daniel Manning."  They have both been charged with similar crimes and Ellsberg has personally reached out to Manning's family.  However contrary to Ellsberg's belief there are some distinctions between the two, most notably the fact that Manning was in the army at the time he released the documents meaning he was bound by the Army's standard operating procedures and chain of command, which he did not follow to release classified data.  Ellsberg had already been out of the Marine Corps for years by the time he released the Pentagon Papers and was not bound by the same restricitions that Mannning was.  Also the media fought to get the pentagin papers released.  With Manning, that does not appear to be the case.   
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/19/wikileaks.ellsberg.manning/index.html?hpt=T2

The Power of Pictures

Recently in class we have discussed how pictures have a big impact on the way people see a story even more so than the words written in an article.  Two examples, one for the good and one for the bad have arisen recently.  After the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, President Obama said that he was "heartbroken" over the images of the devestation in Japan.  More than just having a purely emotional resonse, Obama said that it was the images that really drove him to send more aid to the ravaged country. 
          The second instance of the impact of pictures appeared in Der Spiegel.  The German magazine released photos of United States soldiers in incriminating photos that already have 5 soldiers on trial for murder and war crimes.  The photos of soldiers in the 5th Stryker Brigade show them posing and even smiling with dead Afghan civilians.  Its photos like those that pit the American people against the troops and the war in Afghanistan.  People tend to think that all soldiers must be evil thus making the war evil.  Of course both accusations are wrong, but pictures tend to tell a story that otherwise could never be comprehended.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/03/ap-german-news-group-publishes-afghan-killings-032111/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/14/politics/main20042900.shtml

The Emporer's (bloody) New Clothes

Recently in class we have discussed "soft" news in the media and there is one article/slideshow in particular that stands out as the epitome of soft news.  As Libyan soldiers begin killing their own civillians to keep Gaddafi's evil regime in power, Time Magazine has once again proven why it is plummeting into oblivion.  Time has published an article concerning Gaddafi's wardrobe.  Is that really important to point out in this time of crisis? And the editors of Time are wondering why they are becoming more and more irrelevant with every seemingly worthless article they publish.  See this gem of a slideshow right here: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2055860_2248097,00.html/?xid=yahoo-feat